Made of Matchsticks
by Lutair
Summary: VIII: She takes him with her.
1. Chapter 1

**Boredom strikes in random fandom writing. Unless stated otherwise, none of these are connected. They are from multiple fandoms (books, movies, etc.) and are just ideas that hit me. They probably won't turn into anything serious.**

**Author: **Lutair!**  
Rating: **T**  
Fandom: **Labyrinth AU  
**Summary: "**Ask for the future and you shall receive only that which is uncertain, child."  
**Disclaim. (Syndthyrn is mine.)  
****A/N: **Longer than I planned.

x

There are no windows.

There are no doors.

There are no entrances or exits.

_ There are only wishes._

x

The air is choking him, swaths of opium, like cobwebs and disease, wrapping intoxicating tendrils around his lungs, squeezing, squeezing just so. There are other-life memories in these sensations, genetics that create and flower inside him. He is their product, their design, and his forefather's forefather's are laughing at him.

He can feel it.

The room is almost too dark to see into, and the ostentatious clutter of the place doesn't help him find his destination any quicker. He scuffs his knees and shins on what he thinks are boxes, stacks of books, crates, cages, furniture items, all the while feeling and _not_ feeling tiny, furry animal bodies running over his boots. He jams an elbow into what he hopes is something unbreakable, something cheap, but... this is not the place for those things. He's going to owe her.

A candle lights on a table covered precariously with glass jars of murky liquid and bits of beings he doesn't want to contemplate. The glow, a wavering yellow-purple, casts unfriendly shadows on shelves of things - _hands, teeth, skulls, beaded fingers, jars, jars, books, scrolls, and eyes, always_ - that glare back at him in the gloom.

She is sitting, lounging, draped across a wingback chair so old the leather looks paper thin and spider-silk soft. Elaborate robes cover her from neck to ankles, layers and layers of silk and lace and age, the hem and sleeves so long that they disappear into the shadows beyond her fragile light. Her eyes flicker, just fractionally, behind her eyelids, and he can see a delicate cover of dust resting on her skin.

He is her first customer in almost four hundred years.

And she cannot move without someone there to wish.

"Syndthrn." His voice is a shout in the ancient, sentient, _knowing_ silence of the room.

There is no welcome in her reply, because she knows, deep down, in the same place he does, that what will come of his desire will be only pain, longing, and exhaustion.

"Jareth."

A stool pushes against his knees, making him sit and release a cloud of dust into the stagnant air. She leans forward slowly, and he watches the long, black-ink strands of her hair shift and shudder, thousands of single hairs connected to the dimension. A binding web.

"You know of what I want to ask, Syndthyrn. Tell me it can be done, and I will go."

He is wary, a tight coil in his spine. There is a wisper of laughter in the shadows by her feet. Her reply is slow in coming, slow in deliverance, and deceptively ignorant.

"... And what is it... that you _think_ I know?"

He is terse. The air is getting to him. "What I want. The Wishing. I want it back."

Her sigh is something akin to the flipping of old book pages in the sun. Her eyes close, and she leans back. "You want the future. You want to wish for a stable path to follow, so that you will not err as you have done so many times before. And will no doubt do again."

He lashes out with the Quickening before he can think about replying, sparks of anger igniting in the air to form needle-fine streaks of fire. For a moment, the shelves, so high and daunting, are lit up, and hundreds of inanimate faces glare and snarl at him, their essences angered by the light.

Just as quickly, it is gone, and there is anger in the room. A deep-seeded, ancient sort of anger. The stool shivers beneath him.

"I have given you enough," her eyes are the fire he threw at her, burning, quick-silver and alive, "and you have abused it, used it recklessly. I have given you the Gifts I have seen fit for no other, the ones _destined _to be yours, and now, I wonder, if I read the signs wrong." The candle's flame leaps, turning an electric blue, the soul of his fire being released into it. The light in her eyes dies in time with the flame returning to it's in-between state.

"I have seen every path you should follow, every step you have taken since the Gkiin brought you to me for the Begining, and you have always, always taken the worst turns." She is silent for a long time, face turned towards the light, eyes narrowed, thoughtful and contemplating.

"I do not know if I should be relieved, because you took paths that I had seen Before, or disappointed, that you never asked for the way back." Her eyes alone turn to him, a deep-set amber in the oppressing dark.

The stool scoots him closer, and the heat of her anger is no longer smothering, but warm, enough to make his muscles relax and let him loose some of his anger. His breath rasps in his throat, and he is aware that his time in this place is almost up.

"I have always Wished, Syndthyrn. Since before you gave me the Wishing itself, I have wished. I want to wish for someone, not something, before the time is too late." His eyes, dark to her in the creeping shadows, are down turned, ashamed and embarassed.

"Ask for the future and you shall receive only that which is uncertain, child." Thousands of possibilities float in her minds eye, too quick to focus on, but she doesn't want to see. Not this time.

"But asking is the essence, and Wishing is the grant."

He snaps his attention back to her face so quickly he almost thinks he sees - what? - something other than disinterest or anger on her face. Mild... amusement, maybe. Or pain. It is the most likely, and only because he knows that Giving a Gift hurts her more than the receiver.

There is a light, so blinding not even the shadows can move to escape it, and a hissing, burning pain in his eyes, his hands, his chest... and then it is gone.

"Wish wisely, Goblin King, or the Gift will give you something more than you desire.

x

There are no windows.

There are no doors.

There are no entrances or exits.

_ There are only wishes._

x

He wakes to stone and furs, and the power of Want.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author: **Lutair**  
Rating: **M**  
Fandom: **Supernatural  
**Summary: "**Nthyl. We don't want you here."  
**Disclaim. (Wincest?)  
****A/N: **It's late, and I just can't stop. Also, spoilers(?) maybe, for anyone who hasn't seen the ending of season... six, I think. Also, ages are misleading because I don't care enough to try and correct them.

x

Sometimes, Sam thinks, everybody else knows more about what he's gotta do than he does.

(Like memories of being six and naive and caught in a fae ring, too scared to leave - _too dark, too dark_ - but knowing they didn't want him. Wouldn't keep him.)

There's his dad, all-knowing all-seeing all-whatevering and keeping tabs on him like nobodies business.

(But he's fallen into more magic traps than anyone wants to count - _couldn't keep that shit on a leash if he tried_ - and sometimes he wants to be saved.)

There was - is, has to be, somewhere - his mom, all maternal instinct and reflexes like a knife wielding Pookah.

(And even she couldn't get him to leave those damn specters alone - _and he would never forget how cold his soul had gotten when they said goodbye_ - and she cried for him.)

Then there's Dean. Older, stronger, faster, better at being what he's supposed to be than Sam is at what he's not (and he's damn good at fucking things up, like a natural, a little _demon_ - and that word would haunt him till he knew his life was gone and that someone else, some other, was waiting on the other side.)

Dean who can, Dean who will, Dean who _does._ Dean's got enough spine for both of them, has enough guts and determination and emotional umph to bring all their threats down - _'cept the one that counts, in the end, and Sam doesn't know if he forgives him or not._

Sam's got the smarts, the wiggle room, that height that makes people wary but the structure of a person who might never grow into their skin - _might never have a chance._ He's got enough zap in his tongue to short fuse a phone, but not enough to make the lightning dance like the he's seen the witches do. They say practice - _because deep down in their witch-bone hearts they know this boy isn't like his brother, just like he isn't like them, and it's a worry that will keep them up at night._

So it's not a real wonder that Sam runs to Dean and Dean lets him.

It's not a trial of faith (when did they believe?) to let Dean keep him close when they camped, or keep his hand (fingers like goddamn - _ha! and he might laugh about it later when there isn't anything to do but scream_ - firebrand) on the small of his back in unsavory areas of whatever bum-fuck town their staying in.

(But when he falls into that hole, all those memories he never wanted just come right back up

_the faeries and their cast-away chants, willing him out, willing that he leave them before his taint sticks to their ground. "Nthyl! Nthyl. We don't want you here. We don't!"_

_the water nymphs pushing him to the shore of the lake he thought he could swim, the ever-present not-him shadow making the water shift "Nytahl! Leave us! Nytahl!_

_the specters whispering that they knew where he was going, and they didn't want him to come back, "Nlytha, Nlytha, we've seen you die. Nlytha."_)

He doesn't understand (twenty and six all at once, running away from something that's not behind him, the Impala rumbling as Dean pushes it faster _have to leave_) what it means to be unwanted, what all those beings, those things, meant when they called him so many words that had no meaning then, that meant nothing, left nothing behind but a sound and a memory.

_Nthyl is the Tainted One._

_Nytahl is the Damned One._

_Nlytha is the Banished One._

(Dean will explain, later, years-hours-days later, that the majority of the supernatural commune can't say Satan at all, that the closest they get is variations of Nythlnan, some long-lost word for Evil from some long-lost countries long-lost language.

But he doesn't know that when the Earth closes over his head and the fires of a place-that-shouldn't-be grab his ankles and yank.)


	3. Chapter 3

******Author: **Lutair ******  
Rating: **T******  
Fandom: **Cantarella / Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.**  
****Summary: **There are no bells in hell.**  
****Disclaim. (I blatantly butcher Cesare's age, as well as wherever Ezio happens to kill him in the game, and the people present at that event.)********  
****A/N: **Playing Brotherhood and fixing Rome. Where is my Cesare? *This is a section of the original short!fic I planned on posting, but FF ate it.

x

_"What a travesty, this." The stranger says._

_"Travesty?" He replies, the dark bar on the outskirts of the City his only haunt as of late._

_"This. The imported horse piss they sell as beer. I can get better from the pick-pockets who run a muck in the hills."_

_"Them? The Romulus wolf-fuckers would have better." He can't remember the last time he swore, but it feels good, like he's really only twenty-three._

So when the time comes, and Ezio and his assassin hoard come rolling through Rome with the Romulus tribe at their heels, Cesare laughs, because, really, getting his family in the Church square seems ideal and a little played. Even as Lucrezia and his father, Alfonso and Sancia and his brother (poor boy had to marry early and die early, such was the world) and Chiaro (fighting valiantly, but these assassin fodder are young enough to dodge him, now, and Cesare hates both time and aging in that moment) fall around him, the most he takes from his surroundings is that the church bell ringer had started up the entire knell system, and the cacophony was nearly deafening.

Ezio's blade pushes up between his ribs and into his left lung and his heart, and he wants to smile at the irony, because the demons laughing in his head sound like music, even though he knows there are no bells in Hell.


	4. Chapter 4

******Author: **Lutair******  
Rating: **T******  
Fandom: **Kingdom Hearts (From KH 1 to Birth By Sleep, so... yeah...) And a whole slew of Final Fantasy characters... :D  
**Summary: **Sometimes Cloud dreadfully hated his family.  
******Disclaim. **(I'm totally pulling relationship connections out of thin air, mostly because I have a hair obsession, and, I mean, really... how could half these people _not_ be related? Seriously. And, age abuse, like nobodies business.)  
**A/N:** Notice people missing from this? Yeah, I do to. I skipped over the DS FF games, as well as Crystal Bearers and a couple other KH games because I could. See major characters that are missing from a specific group from a specific game? So do I. I only pulled Lightning, Vanille and Hope from FFXIV or whatever, because I couldn't relate to the other characters (and this goes for all the characters that were important but I did not include) or I didn't know enough about them. I think it's packed enough as it is.

x

Sometimes, cosmic rifts are a wonderful thing. Meaning, sugar high authors get to do what they please. I pity those involved.

Oh wait… I don't.

x

Cloud couldn't remember ever _not_ being in an obnoxiously large family. In fact, he couldn't remember being an only child, probably because his first younger sibling was born a year after her was, give or take a few months, and what single-childhood-dom he'd had went down the drain (seasonal birthdays where a necessity, forget individual celebrations). He didn't have enough fingers, toes, or physical extremities to count (his brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews got organized by hair color and height, never-mind blood relation) and he didn't want to try.

Like now.

Because, Hel have mercy, it was the end of the year and, Thor be willing, a Christmas party was planned.

Sometimes Cloud dreadfully hated his family.

His family rented out one restaurant every year for their annual "Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Years" family gathering, and by now the workers at 'Midgar Fine Dining' were used to the crowded main chambers of their establishment every twenty-fifth of December. They even had to request in interlocking tables, so that, instead of one long rectangular table, they had one C shaped table with so many leaf-slots, Cloud eventually stopped counting.

The official 'gathering' didn't start till eight (considering that almost half the family had to fly or drive over from the other side of the continent), but the room was already stifling with bodies. There was a group of his brothers (Roxas, Sora, Ventus and Vanitas (both sets of twins) in one corner of the room, seemingly conspiring with _another_ set of twins, Reno and Axel, while their younger sister Kairi sat off to the side looking bored out of her mind. Their eldest brother, Genesis, was chatting rather aggressively with yet another group of siblings - Yazoo, Kadaj, and Loz, triplets themselves, and their eldest brother Sepheroth. He watched absently as Riku, the youngest of their silver-haired entourage, wondered over to join his brothers in the corner. Figures. That twerp had been possessive of his brothers since they'd been born. He had it in his head to march over there and drag him back to his own kind (screw being related through marriage or whatever), when he noticed _another _blond deviant enter the room and make a B-line for his siblings. Demyx. Fantastic. Second eldest brother to the Strife line and he acted like Sora did on a good day.

At that moment it seemed like the rest of the blond faction entered the room. Vaan and Ashe, also twins, came in with Ingus, who was followed closely by Zell and Rikku, _another_ set of twins. Cloud cursed genetics, the Lifestream, and all things related to multiple reproduction practices. Seifer trooped in behind the group, obviously trying to distance himself from the rest of the group immediately. Cloud shared his pain.

He turned slightly, angling his gaze back on his _immediate_ immediate family, and suddenly there was a swarm of brown haired people in the room, and he backed up against the wall he'd been leaning against. Yet another group of triplets, this time sisters (he thanked Hel for that, the pissing contests tonight where going to be in the family gossip mill for months after), Yuna and Selphie, with their 'eldest' sister Aerith at the head of their trio. Thereafter, Squall, and his cousins (Clouds technical second cousins through marriage (his head was starting hurt, he'd need to lay down soon) Terra, Angeal and Zack wondered in, minutes later followed by Irvine (one of the few single children born to their family, like Seifer) who looked around, found Seifer (Cloud rolled his eyes) and began chatting the other man up.

That time seemed to be the signal for the last of the single children to get their hides inside, because Yuffie and Aqua (brought into the family by marriage (and Yuffie being maybe-possibly Vincent's half-cousin) rolled in as well, heading straight for Irvine and Seifer at the far end of the room.

After that, somewhere, a dam broke, because Cloud swore on his swords that no one (_no one!_) could have planned the veritable stampede that came after.

Vincent and Laguna, brothers with a year-and-a-half apart age-wise, entered, followed by Rinoa and her younger sister Tifa, who were talking animatedly with Lightning and _her_ younger sister, Vanille, followed by Paine and her half-brother (who was also adopted in the Sepheroth family branch by Sepheroth's mother Jenova) Hope.

Cloud's own parents had gracefully backed out of the chaos that was Christmas Day, instead slipping away to a resort in the mountains. And, from what Cloud could see of parental figures (or lack there of), so had everyone else's. And he understood, of course, with the oldest of the 'children' here being no younger than twenty six, and the youngest no older than fifteen (Cloud was reluctant to admit that all four of his twin brothers where among this group, as well as Kairi, Riku, and a few others he really didn't care to remember). This night was going to be torture. He could taste it.

x

Ten minutes into the meal, and all four of his brothers launched an assortment of mashed potato's, peas, fruit slices, gravy, bacon bits, and turkey stuffing across the table.

Cloud let his head drop next to his plate, contemplating fratricide.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author:** Lutair  
**Rating:** T  
**Fandom:** Ouran High School Host Club  
**Summary:** Kyoya is never surprised.  
**Disclaim.** (I take liberties with everything. I'm also going into psychology.)  
**A/N:** Yeah. Onespark!KyoyaHaruhi.

x

It doesn't take long for him to see it - he was, after all, the first to realize anything about the girl in the first place - but he doesn't particularly question her motives. The matter, after all, was rather simple.

Haruhi was uncomfortable in female clothing.

It isn't surprising, really, after the amount of time they'd dedicated to keeping her out of it. It is on one of their increasingly frequent shopping trips - Haruhi is moving out of her old apartment, and into a new one, by herself, and oh how Tamaki wails at that - that he observes her completely pass over the majority of the woman's clothing section and head towards the pants. Her chosen style is not unflattering - she's grown into her feminine body since her first year at Ouran, at least - simply not entirely 'girly' in the ways in which Tamaki, and sometimes Huni, press for. Mori doesn't comment, and the Hitachiin's adapt accordingly, but he finds it equally intriguing and amusing.

He prefers her without clothing entirely.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author:** Lutair  
**Rating:** T  
**Fandom:** Kobato  
**Summary:** the elemental spirits floating around the school girls four paces ahead of him were far more unusual that floating food.  
**Disclaim.** If there had never been a time limit and Fujimoto never broke his arm. After the nursery was torn down. Mentions of xxxHolic, Legal Drug, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, and Magic Knight Rayearth.  
**A/N:** I watch a lot of anime when I have nothing to do. This ended up being wa-y longer than initially planned.

x

_The crowd is eerily quiet, underneath the rumbling of the machinery. There are no sniffles, or dripping tears. There is no mumbling, or fidgeting of any kind. It is an equally momentous and depressing occasion. _

_The children are quiet because of the loss that echoes in their souls._

_Sayaka is quiet because of the loss that is reflected in her memories._

_Kobato is quiet because of the loss of a dream._

_Half way across town, Fujimoto Kiyokazu's right foot slips from the gas pedal to the break, just in time to watch a silver moving van - "Helping you with your burdens!" - flash past. _

She moves out four days after the deconstruction is finished. She speaks only to Chitose, while her daughters are at school, and says simply that, "I should be closer to my other job. I'll keep in touch."

She takes full working hours at Tirol - but they only need her three days out of the week, and the rest of the time she has is too empty. Ioryogi says nothing - there is nothing to say. She is learning the ways of humanity slowly, but this is one of he greatest, and most hurtful lessons.

The casting away of displeasing and unhappy thoughts.

She applies for early morning hours at a drug store, and is accepted. The three workers are polite, but distant, and she is satisfied. She gets a job at a laundromat for the afternoons, but her nights remain open the other four days of the week. Ioryogi silently blames Fujimoto - the girl had never woken so early or stayed up so late before meeting him. She runs on considerably less sleep than before, but she also works herself into the ground. He knows, because she sleeps like the dead when her head finally hits her pillow late at night.

The last job she gets is possibly his least favorite, and the most painful for her. It is the one that holds the most lessons, though, and Ioryogi is equally grateful and furious.

She volunteer nurses at the local hospital. Her line of reasoning is that there could not possibly be a better place to find wounded hearts than in a building where wounded people reside.

It is a Tuesday when she sees him for the first time - six months and four days after the final demolition of... but she won't think of it - when he comes in to receive his prescription for the week. He'd broken his arm lifting boxes while balancing precariously on a ladder. Ioryogi mutters something about 'Hitsuzen', and 'fate', but she really isn't paying attention. In fact, she isn't paying attention to much at all, her gaze focused firmly on the clean, hospital issue slippers.

He hadn't seen her at first - or, rather, he had, but hadn't recognized her. She'd taken to tying her hair back in a pony-tail, rather than the braids she used to wear. He couldn't know that it had been an unconscious shift, a move she'd rationalized by telling herself it was easier and took up considerably less time than her dual braids. She also plead, but only to Ioryogi, that in sanitary places like the hospital and the laundromat, loose hair could not be tolerated.

It shocked him, how much like himself she seemed, with her hair tied back, the tired and determined set to her shoulders, the look of quiet longing, of desperation and depression in her eyes. He knew those eyes - they'd been his, been Sayaka's, they'd even been Domoto's at one point, when the kind boy had lost his mother to cancer two years prior.

She'd given him his prescription, and he'd left.

He came back the next week with reservations to a litter diner and a forceful set to his jaw.

He left with a polite, but firm, decline.

It went on that way for the next month, until he came in daily, scraping by on time while running between jobs, badgering her. It'd taken half the time for him to cave to Sayaka - although he didn't want to analyze that - when he'd been depressed initially, but the tiny girl's determination didn't faze him. He was wearing her down, he could see it in her eyes.

On the third week of the second month - by which his arm had been healed, and he'd been coming in to get vitamins and cough syrup, if he got anything at all - she finally replied with an affirmative - and only because she'd agreed with Ioryogi that he had finally started a small fan club among the women of her floor, staff an patients alike. It made her heart ache and her chest hurt, and not in a pleasant way.

So they went on a date.

And then another.

And another.

They'd been 'dating' for close to three months before Kiyokazu found out that they worked at the same drug store. They'd been dating for five months before he found out that she worked at a laundromat.

They'd been dating for a year and a half before she gave him the first four digits of her address, and sent him hunting.

They'd been dating for two years before he got to enter her apartment, and then it only took him another four months to get her to let him come back.

There were certain things that she didn't put on display, ever, and he wouldn't have found out about them if she hadn't torn the apartment appart one day - almost three years into their relationship - wailing about a bottle of heart konpeto.

(The week prior, Ioryogi had been visited by an Usagi, bearing a message - if Kobato decided that her wish wasn't important anymore, then the bottle would be taken from her, and the contract would be broken. He'd acted disappointed and outraged, but the wayward spirit had regained her memories long before the heavenly rabbits visit, and he couldn't say he was terribly surprised. God, despite his equalatic nature, was kind-of a dick.)

The week after tornado Kobato ravaged the house, she slipped into a sickness unlike either Ioryogi or Fujimoto had ever seen - she was equally hot and cold, hungry and bowing to the porcelain god, suffering from insomnia and sleeping through days on end.

It took a month for the stuffed dog to realize what was happening, and by that time the worst of it is gone, leaving only a weary Kiyokazu and a happy, but still green around the edges, Kobato.

God had broken the contract, and completed her physical body, removing the glowing crown that had symbolized her presence as a spirit. He'd 'left' her, because she'd stopped going out to collect the heart candy after a year and a half of being in Kiyokazu's presence.

(Ioryogi gets a call from a shop that no one can see, telling him to drop off three pizzas and two baumkuchen boxes, because the wish had been fulfilled, and would the spirit-lady please drop by for a visit? a conversation had to be had, thank you.)

(on his way he sees a blue light and a flying pork bun, but doesn't think anything of it, really, because weirder things had happened, and the elemental spirits floating around the school girls four paces ahead of him were far more unusual that floating food.)


	7. Chapter 7

**Author:** Lutair  
**Rating:** T  
**Fandom:** Ouran High School Host Club  
**Summary:** No, it is none of these things.  
**Disclaim.** (Family is a big deal to me.)  
**A/N:** I feel like a sick, twisted individual. Maybe!KyoyaFuyumi, definate!KyoyaHaruhi.

x

Fuyumi Ootori is, by far, the most intelligent of Yoshio Ootori's children.

She will never run a business, because it is not acceptable for an Ootori woman to be the head of a firm directly related to the Ootori franchise - or in association with business in any way, because the Ootori have their fingers in everyone else's pie.

She will never be a commanding social figure, because it is not acceptable for and Ootori woman to commandeer the attention of a populace whose focus should be directed at the Ootori men - it is almost treason in the Ootori house hold, were the Ootori men are law.

She will never see any document relating to anything financial, ever - because, while under her father's roof, she has no need to understand the finer points of the monetary scene, and when she is married, it will be the job of her husband to deal with the financial matters.

But Fuyumi Ootori is, by far, the most intelligent of Yoshio Ootori's children.

And this is because she is female.

x

Fuyumi is the first, and only, person to hold Kyoya during his childhood. Their mother is tacked almost permanently to their father's arm, and their older brothers have no time for the newest addition to their household. Yoshio's interest in Kyoya spans only that he is male, and therefore a larger bargaining peice than Fuyumi herself. She knows she is not entirely invaluable to the Ootori family - through her marriage they will gain a wealth of connections and favors - but she also understands that Kyoya's slot in life is only marginally larger than her own.

She vows to the both of them - her infant brother and herself - that she will not allow him to waste away in the shadows of their brothers triumphs.

Ootori women are notoriously strong.

Fuyumi is by far the strongest.

x

Kyoya is seven when Fuyumi first introduces him to her own collage course work - she does not expect him to solve it, or even grasp it remotely - but his aptitude for all things school related has her thinking ten and twenty years ahead.

She will see that he outshines their older brothers, even if it means having him practice theorems and formulas instead of playing soccer and video-games.

By the time he is ten, she has him helping her with her collage work almost exclusively.

He maintained his place at the top of the class since the first grade.

Fuyumi is proud to say that she knows exactly why.

x

When Fuyumi first gets engaged, Kyoya almost throws a fit. She knows because she has been his 'mother' since the first week of his existence, and he cannot fool her so late in the game. She can read him like a book, despite how hard he tries to change the language the words are in.

She watches as his fingers stop their comfortable drumming on the table - it is the one tick that Yoshio permits, and solely because he himself does it - and the corners of his eyes crinkle behind his glasses. He does not smile - it is rare that he does it with meaning, anyway - but his head tilts to the side only fractionally, and she knows that she will have to work twice as hard as anyone else to open the door that had just closed.

He congratulates her, and allows her to hold his head against her chest while she cries.

x

When Fuyumi gets engaged again - because her first fiance's company went down the drain due to gambling debts, and her father would not stand for _her_ to be the dominant name in her own marriage - she takes Kyoya out to their privately owned shooting range, and tells him to shoot for her, because she has a meeting with her fiance in twenty minutes and can't allow herself to get dirtied up.

It is a lie, of course, because the ring already hangs like a two ton weight around her finger, but Kyoya didn't need to know that.

Fuyumi is strong, because Kyoya needs her, and he cannot allow himself to be weak.

Fuyumi is strong, because she is the only one Kyoya permits to cry for him, because he does not know how.

x

Fuyumi is the first person to learn of the Host Club, and, consequentially, that 'darling French boy' Tamaki's involvement in it. She is the only one to see the subtle shift in her youngest brother's eyes when he speaks of it - the people involved are high on his list of things to talk about, as are the dramatic, often outlandish plans that Tamaki forces into motion.

She is also the first to learn that Kyoya's clientele at the Host Club consists of only sixty girls - the smallest number of requests for any Host in the group. She knows it is because his first job is organizing the finances for the group, but also that he has little tolerance for the young women who attend Ouran.

She tells him to wait, because someone will come who snaps up his attention, and then he'll be sorry for not opening his doors wider before hand.

Fuyumi is the only person who's casual advice is taken to heart, because Kyoya Ootori recognizes that his sister's slot in life is smaller than his own, and she will never have the chance to change it.

x

She is the first person to learn of Haruhi Fujioka, an honor student girl masquerading as a boy at her brother's school because the Host King was too blind to see that she was a she before giving her a boy's uniform.

She is also the first to see Kyoya stutter - but not a normal stutter, more like reminiscent pausing, because no Ootori would dare suffer from stuttering - over a girl.

It takes her half a second to connect the slight tensing in Kyoya's shoulders to the fact that _Haruhi Fujioka, an honor student girl masquerading as a boy_ held no value in the world of the elite whatsoever, and her youngest brother was still interested.

x

Kyoya Ootori is the first person - after Fuyumi herself - to hold her first child.

It is a boy.

His name is Haruhi, after his uncle's wife.

x

Fuyumi Ootori is, by far, the most intelligent of Yoshio Ootori's children.

Not because she broke the boundaries of her familial imposed prison, or because she usurped her eldest brother and took the reigns of their vast economic empire. It is not because she refused to marry, or married so high up that she left her family floundering in awe in the dust of her ascent into greater wealth.

No, it is none of these things.

Fuyumi Ootori is the most intelligent of Yoshio Ootori's children because she helped mold a boy who would grow to do all the things she couldn't, simply because she knew no one else would try.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author:** Lutair  
**Rating:** T  
**Fandom:** Faster than a Kiss  
**Summary:** She takes him with her.  
**Disclaim.** (This is kinda depressing. If Teppei didn't drop the little candy-bead-things in chapter one.)  
**A/N:** I'm rereading the series.

x

The jar is full, and, deep inside her, something clicks. Maybe a timer goes off, maybe she breaks. She doesn't really know for sure - it's just a feeling. Just a sense that it's over. The charade is through, there is no longer any need for her to stay.

It's not like she's really married, anyway.

She tells him he can stay - it'd be better for him, anyway. But he doesn't, because she's his, always, the last tie to a life neither of them can reclaim.

She takes him with her.

He asks her why she wants to leave Maa-kun, why, if she likes him, does she think she has to go. She doesn't reply - not really. She pats his head and tells him that this is best, that Maa-kun is a big boy with his own life, and that she was just intruding. An unwanted guest.

The train arrives thirty seconds early - she takes his hand, and leads him into the sectional door closest. They get window seats (she is determined to look back on this moment and remember that she was happy).

The doors are rasping closed when he finally arrives - thirty seconds too late.

All she hears is the 'Fu-!' of her own name, and then the doors click closed.

He is breathing hard. He must have run, she thinks, one hand against the glass. She isn't crying, but staring out in abject wonder.

The train speeds off.

x

Four months later, he opens his door to find Teppei at his mat, head down, hands clenched.

Fumino is no where to be seen.

The boy thrusts a crumpled piece of paper at him, holding back sniffles.

_'I asked him where he wanted to go. He told me he wanted to see you.  
__Thank you.'_

The boy walks inside.

x

For the next four years, he recieves money in the mail every month for the wayward child under his care. There is never a return address, there is only a generic post stamp from places too far for him to get in one night - one hour - and only the barest of notes. The ammount enclosed doubles on holidays, and tripples on birthdays.

She returns on a Tuesday, durring the summer break, and he doesn't know what to say for the majority of her visit.

She is older, beyond even the physical growth that nature has brought her. Her eyes hold a peculiar mix of hardened determination and exceptance - she has done thing she is not proud of, they tell him in a quiet voice, but she does not regret doing them.

Teppei, eight and quiet and still for a child his age, is in tears, arms wrapped around his elder sister's neck. She looks at him, then, her still eyes equally hard and desperate.

The woman walks inside.


End file.
